Welcome to the class blog of Ben Villarreal's Freshman English 12 Course: Visual and Verbal Literacies! Here you'll find the thoughts, ideas, and burgeoning written work from our class about the multiple literacies we experience.

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22 February 2012

THE REINVENTION OF COMICS!

Scott McCloud begins his chapter of "The Twelve Revolutions" by introducing himself and explaining how he's been making comics for fifteen years, and how he loves it. McCloud wants all comics to reach their full potential along with his own. When Scott was a kid, he seemed to have more innovative responses because of the different styles of comic books.
Scott then begins to explain about his career along with other authors of comics in the early eighties. According to him, he had a "feeling" that comics were about to make a big come together. The comics images began to expand along with its content. Everything on the authors public image was up including sales. It hit the peak, and soon had a downfall that was very hard for the authors to deal with.
There are nine ideas that comic professionals agreed on. Comics are literature, creators rights, industry innovations,public perception,institutional scrutiny, gender balance, minority representation, and lastly, diversity of genre. All nine ideas improved over ten years.
There are new threats that comics now face. They are known as the loss of readers, and all the new talent that is arising. In the nineties, creators of comics challenged comics in a new way and found a way to break out of the hard times.
Scott then begins to argue that in order for comics to reach their full potential, comics must expand their territories. Comics are basic art forms and communication media. They may not be as popular as television shows or movies but they don't have to. They need to appeal to human needs so we can understand them, and exchange ideas between the reader and the creator.
As I see it, McCloud refers to a lot of this information that was previously in his book, Understanding Comics at the end of the book. In order to understand what this chapter is about in his new book, you must have read his first otherwise nothing would make sense.